COACHING TURNOVER is a standard feature for many athletic programs. But at San Marin High, athletic director Craig Pitti has struggled to find someone — anyone — with the time and inclination to take over the boys volleyball program.

Enter Phil Steiner.

Steiner, who just finished a winter stint as the freshman boys basketball coach at the school, became the team's fourth coach in four seasons when he accepted the job a few weeks ago. He took the job after an invitation from some of his former basketball players and, in doing so, prevented Pitti from having to shut the program down this spring.

The fact that he has had to take a crash course on volleyball is only a slight inconvenience, he said.

"I do not have a lot of experience," Steiner acknowledged. "For me, it's been a lot of studying in the past few weeks to just figure out this game and the complexities of it. So, I don't really have that much experience. But I'm excited. I've got a good core of guys here that are helping me along and are really open to me being here."

Steiner, 39, succeeds Pitti as coach after Pitti ran the show last season because he couldn't find anybody else to take the reins. A year earlier, former San Marin player Theo Madias was in charge after stepping up from assistant coach when Tim Hawkins stepped down as head coach after the 2010 season.

Pitti, who concedes he had no volleyball background before his coaching role last season, said he consulted with other MCAL athletic directors and volleyball coaches in each of the past two years looking for candidates but came up empty.

"We had no candidates, no applicants at all," Pitti said. "Unfortunately, it seems like boys volleyball in this area doesn't have the same clout as girls volleyball does. "... But even with the possibility of not having a team, I just couldn't commit to doing this again. So I basically told the guys they had to find somebody and they kind of reached out to Phil. He said he was kind of new to the sport, but he said he was interested and up to the challenge."

The Mustangs, whose roster includes fourth-year players Vini Souza and Hakeem Sherif, say they are excited just to have a coach. It's a bonus, they say, that they like Steiner and believe they are learning some volleyball skills from him.

"I just like coming out to play," said Souza, who was an honorable mention pick to the all-MCAL team last spring. "Being able to play is nice. Last year was mostly all for fun but even last year we improved a lot — we saw players improving. This year with Phil, since he's been studying and doing all this stuff, I'm pretty sure we'll do pretty well by the end of the season."

Sherif said that the coaching turnover hasn't really bothered him.

"It's a different experience with each coach," Sherif said. "You learn something more with each coach. Each coach has given us more experience, worked with us in practice and in their own ways training us. Phil might not know everything, but he comes to practice and we run drills the way he wants us to and we learn a little bit out of each drill. I mean, we haven't had any coach do that before with no experience."

Souza and Sherif both said they believe the team has the potential to be better than it was last season, when the Mustangs finished 4-10. But they also acknowledged that they could fall short of that mark — several potential returnees, including some basketball players, opted not to come out for the team. Either way, they say they feel like they are in good hands with Steiner on the sidelines.

The coach said he looks forward to the season.

"For me, any time it comes to sports, it's not really about the sport, it's about the young men I coach," Steiner said. "It is more for me about instilling good values about what it means to be a young man. So, the avenue for that is sports, and I just thought volleyball was an avenue to help them get further in life."

Does that mean Steiner could be around the program for a while?

"You never know," Steiner said. "There's always a chance. But I'm learning and I'm growing. We'll just see what happens."

Pitti said he is confident that Steiner will do well regardless of the team's record.